When a Giraffe Dies at a city zoo, What is done with the body?

Question

How do they dispose of such a large animal?

Our city zoo had one of their Giraffes die last week, and I'm curious as to what they do with the body..

Please don't answer this if you don't really know.

Answer 1

Oftentimes (assuming the animal was not sick), they will feed the meat to carnivores at the zoo, then put the carcass is a "carpet beetle" cage, a fine meshed cage large enough for the dead animal with beetles in it who cannot get out through the holes.  The beetles clean the bones in a short time, and the skeleton can then be sold to a museum.

Answer 2

I live an work at my uncles zoo and there are two answers. For really big animasl or special (endangered) we bury them, mainly beacue it is towards  our religious beliefs however if an anteloped dies than we chop it up and give it to the Tigers (the zoo was originally a tiger sanctuary, we hand raise the,) and other carnivories if the meat is good. However most animasl die of old age and so the meat is not suitable. They will probaly bury the girrafe or sell it to some one

Answer 3

Young, healthy specimens are fed to the other animals (why waste it?)

Some are buried

Some are frozen to be referred back to (for records - eg. if it died of a rare disease)

Some are incinerated

Some are sold to taxidermists and universities as study skins

Answer 4

This isn't going to be a pretty answer, but here goes.

When a large animal, (ex: elephant, rhino, hippo, giraffe, etc.) dies, usually most of the necropsy is done on the spot. After the Vets are finished with what they need to do, collecting tissue samples, blood, etc. the body is sawed up (sometimes a chainsaw for the really large ones) and removed with a Bobcat. If the animal is wild caught, it is probably going to be buried on the Zoo grounds, if it is a captive born animal, they are incerated or taken to a processing plant. Not of all the animals parts go to waste though. Most Zoos will furnish the skulls and skeletons (& sometimes hides) to Universities and/or Colleges for study.

Edit: Our Zoo never feeds out dead specimens. You don't know what that animal was carrying or a final cause of death, and it's awfully risky to be feeding it to the rest of your collection.

Answer 5

Dead zoo animals are incinerated. With a large animal like a giraffe, the body is cut into sections so that it will fit into the incinerator. No zoo would feed a dead animal to carnivores in its collection, at least not here in the UK - this would not only be illegal, but potentially dangerous. If the animal died of disease, you could infect the animals you're feeding it to or spread the disease to others in moving the carcass around. It would also be upsetting for the keepers involved to see the animals they have cared for being butchered and fed to other animals - if your hamster died, you wouldn't feed it to your cat, would you?

It's also unusual for zoos to bury their animals, since this would take not only time and money but would require somewhere specific to bury them, but it does happen occasionally with smaller animals. In the past, bodies were sometimes donated to museums to be stuffed or to have their skeletons mounted, but this rarely happens these days. Today, most specimens in museums are many years old, though some are acquired from animals which have died being illegally smuggled into or out of countries.